This story might sound familiar: A group of friends come up with a cool open source gizmo. Within days, they raise more than 20 times their original funding goal on Kickstarter. In most stories, the next chapter would include a lengthy delay while the team learns hard lessons about the challenges of manufacturing in China.

In the case of the uArm, a clever, low-cost robotic appendage, this is unlikely to be a problem. The team behind this wildly popular ‘bot—Evan Deng, Aler Gu, Loeve Le, James Wang, and Eric Wang—hail from Shenzen, China and have years of mass production expertise. Audaciously, they plan to deliver their product just two months after the Kickstarter campaign concludes on March 6.

The kit, starting at $185 dollars, is designed to give students and tinkerers a testbed to experiment with robotics. “There are lot of people who are interested in robots but don’t know where to start, or get scared off by the ridiculous price,” says Eric Wang. “We want to help these kinds of people to get started learning robots, to join the community.”

All five members of the team had previously worked on robotics projects and wanted to share the excitement of making mechanical creatures come to life. They’ve worked on interesting technical challenges, like robots that can balance themselves on balls, but they also have a keen sense of how to approach the market.

How to Sell the Market, Despite Product Limitations

First, they understood they needed a “dramatic” product to capture the attention of students and hobbyists. “We started with the uArm first because it fits people’s impression about a robot,” says Wang. “When you say ‘robot,’ the first image that pops in people’s mind is probably not a remote controlled car, but something more figurative.”

Second, they have a good sense of product management and the ability to balance cost and performance. The team is upfront about the device’s limitations. It provides four degrees of motion and features claw and suction cup end-effectors, but isn’t optimized for ultra-precise operations. Software utilizing inverse kinematics algorithms allow the arm to be controlled via coordinates, and it is approachable enough to be hacked to work with computer mice, keyboards, iPhones, and Wiimotes. All told, the system is sophisticated enough to play a xylophone and unbox an iPhone with more finesse than your average AT&T store employee.

Third, the uArm lacks industrial precision and strength, tradeoffs made to keep the cost low. The open nature of the system means that keen roboticists can upgrade the arm’s plastic panels with aluminum structural components and replace its servo motors with steppers to create a robot capable of more taxing applications.

There are plenty of robot arms targeted towards learners, but the uArm is the only one that’s totally open source, including the mechanical drawings, electronic schematics, and code. “We want to contribute to the field of robotic education, in the future when the time comes, we will open source the project along with detailed tutorials,” says Wang. This also provides a “unique selling proposition” in a market filled with low-cost robotic arms.

The $185 uArm comes as a kit that gives students a dual lesson about robotics and manufacturing. Photo: uFactory

The intelligent design of the system has earned the team nearly $170,000 in their campaign, and where most teams would be scrambling to find a contract manufacturer at this point, the uFactory team is nonplussed with the challenge.

In the United States, a single cycle of prototyping a PCB can take a week or more and often requires the assistance of a fabrication shops a few states away or even in China. This delay leaves the engineers idle, but for UFactory having new prototypes produced is as easy as stopping by a dry cleaner. “You send out the design, work on something else, then you can pick up the circuit board when you go out for dinner,” says Wang. “It is truly the factory of the world.”

That’s not to say the East-to-West transfer comes without challenges. On either side of the Pacific, shipping is a challenge. “The biggest obstacle we met so far is delivering,” says Wang. “For delicate machines like these, it is really hard to get them properly delivered without damage.”

During the last two years, a bevy of incubators and service providers have popped up to help Western entrepreneurs navigate the confusing and cloistered world of overseas manufacturing. In some ways, it might be more effective for these companies to reverse their polarity and provide marketing support, translation services, and other assistance to Asian engineers who understand manufacturing, but lack clear routes to customers. “As a maker myself, I saw a lot of smart ideas and innovations being made in China, but they mostly stayed in China due to the language barrier,” says Wang.

The uFactory team isn’t alone and knows of half a dozen other companies in Shenzen preparing for crowdfunding campaigns. “For years people think of China as a factory that makes low quality product with really low prices, and does not see the innovative potential it has,” says Wang. “But the only reason they think that way is because most countries only pays for the cheapest stuff, thus that’s what they see.” Unburdened by the cost-cutting mentality of Western product managers, Wang and company want to show the world what China’s factories are capable of.

Thirty years ago Bill Gates promised to put a computer on every desk in America, an ambitious sentiment echoed by Wang and company. “The most innovative aspect of the entire project is probably the concept of putting a robot arm on your desk,” says Wang. “We would love to see future full of people who are just as interested in robotics as we are.”

Kickstarter may not officially operate in China, but don’t be surprised to see more products from the country making their way to US markets via crowdfunding. “There is definitely a huge market in this,” says Wang. “And as more and more Chinese people have the awareness of how this works, the market will only get bigger.”